Burmese Director Midi Z on ‘Ice Poison’

Home is an elusive concept for Midi Z, a Myanmar-born, Taiwan-based filmmaker with roots in mainland China.

The youngest in a family of five children, Midi (which means small in Burmese) grew up in poverty in Lashio, a town in Burma’s northern Shan State. Life was bitter and volatile under the junta government, especially for the descendants of Chinese refugees, who were viewed as an inferior minority, he recalls.

“The farther away you are from home, the more you cling on to your roots,” says the 32-year-old director. “That’s what happened to the Chinese community that lives on the border of China and Myanmar.”

In his latest film “Ice Poison,” the title gives away its main subject of narcotics. Yet the underlying theme remains the same as many of his other movies, including “Poor Folk” (2012) and “Return to Burma” (2011): the Chinese diaspora and the yearning for home.

Shot entirely in Myanmar, the movie opens with an old Chinese farmer and his nameless son (Wang Shin-hong) toiling on their parched field in Lashio. In desperation, the farmer sells his beloved cow to buy a run-down scooter so his son can drive a motorcycle taxi. He has just one stipulation: his son mustn’t get involved in drugs, a growing epidemic in their town.

One day, at a bus stop, the son meets a Burmese-born Chinese woman named Sanmei (Wu Ke-xi), who was tricked into going to China to be sold as the wife of an older man. Back in Burma for a funeral, she plans never to return to China – but she now needs to make money to send for her son to join her in Lashio. Her get-rich-quick scheme centers on helping her drug-dealing cousin deliver methamphetamines, known as “ice poison,” to local addicts. After much cajoling, she finally convinces the son to go into business with her as a driver.

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‘Sometimes when you are separated by time and space for too long, at some point you realize, you no longer have a home,’ says director Midi Z.

According to Midi Z, the movie aims to offer a realistic view of what life is still like for 99% of the people in the Southeast Asian country despite its recent changes. “As a tourist, you can visit Myanmar one time or 100 times,” he says, but “you will never see the real Myanmar because you are shielded.”

Beneath the veneer of modernization, “most of the country is still extremely poor with almost zero visible improvements to speak of,” the director adds. He describes his home country as “stuck in time 50 years back.”

Because of his impoverished upbringing, the director knew from a young age that money was a priority. In 1998, he won a scholarship to study in Taiwan at age 16, and by age 22 he had graduated from one of Taiwan’s top technical schools and earned enough income by shooting commercials and short films to build his family a new home. Instead of feeling satisfied, however, it only left him wondering, “So what’s next in life?”

The answer, he says, was to tell the stories of the subject closest to his heart: life in Myanmar.

In 2008, he returned to Lashio for the first time in a decade. By that time, one of his early short films, Paloma Blanca (2006), was already being screened on the global film-festival circuit. But on his trip home, he discovered that the 10-year separation had created a rift between the filmmaker and his family, with a chilly politeness replacing the warm, familiar camaraderie he had grown up with.

“Sometimes when you are separated by time and space for too long, at some point you realize, you no longer have a home,” he says. “That’s what happened to me.”

Due to the sensitive nature of his films, his works are not shown in Myanmar. “Maybe someday it will happen, I hope,” he says.

His next movie, “The Road to Mandalay,” about the plight of two young illegal migrant workers and their eventual mutual destruction, is set for completion in 2015.

“Ice Poison” made its debut this month at the 2014 Berlin International Film Festival and will be released in Taiwan in July.

About Southeast Asia Real Time

Indonesia Real Time provides analysis and insight into the region, which includes Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Brunei. Contact the editors at SEAsia@wsj.com.

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